Free Traffic Legal Advice

We can deal with the admin fees later, I would suggest the first priority is the parking charge notices, as these are £100 each. You have variously referred to a number of charges - your Dropbox account shows 9 notices addressed to Hertz, and 1 addressed to you. It is the ones addressed to you we need to consider, as these are the ones you are able to appeal. Hertz should provide your details as the hirer for each, and you should receive a Notice to Hirer for each one.

It might help if you can provide a list with dates, showing where we are up to with each, including:

• Have you received a Notice to Hirer?
• Copy of Notice to Hirer
• Does the notice to hirer include any additional documents relating to your vehicle lease?
• Have you appealed?

For any Notices to Hirer that you have not yet appealed (and are still in time to do so) we can advise on appeals for these. For those appealed or out of time, there are other avenues of challenge to explore, but if we can get some of them appealed we can potentially strengthen your position.

I have updated the dropbox with pictures of the signs in the residents' car park.

I've also just received a forwarded email from PPM to the the building manager saying its basically my fault for not giving vehicle details to PPM and that the invoices are "valid and should be appealed".

They're clearly in cahoots it seems to me.

The link to the DropBox file no longer works so I have no idea as to the details that you are relying on. However, @DWMB2 has already given you advice.

Hi mate, thanks for the comprehensive reply, I took down the original link so I could remove some personal details from the pics, but I’ve re-uploaded everything, and it should be working now, here’s the new link:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/q7n81doopzan498k23tks/AOhiNccHQF700-OFE2m5yxo?rlkey=esca3ju463jysxqboczujxi1t&st=l0q64miy&dl=0

Based solely on what I can see in your posts, this is my take on what you need to do and the order in which the separate issues need to be dealt with.

We need one key thing from you before anyone can give targeted residential lease arguments.

We need the exact wording from your lease/tenancy (and any addendum you were given when you started paying the extra £50/month) about parking and/or rights to use any bay. Not a paraphrase.

Copy and paste the exact clauses, including headings, exactly as written, covering all of the following if they exist:

1. Any clause that grants a right to park, use a parking space, use a bay number, or use any “common parts” for parking.

2. Any clause that mentions permits, regulations, estate rules, management rules, “reasonable regulations”, or the landlord/managing agent’s power to introduce or vary rules.

3. Any clause that mentions compliance with signage, third-party contractors, enforcement, penalties, charges, or “service providers”.

4. Any plan/schedule page that shows a numbered bay allocated to your flat, or language like “the right to use space number X” or “exclusive use”.

5. Any clause that says the landlord/managing agent can withdraw or suspend facilities, or change arrangements, or require you to give vehicle details.

6. If you are a tenant, the tenancy clause about parking (even if it says nothing). If it is silent, we need to see that silence in context (e.g., the “rights granted” section and any “regulations” section).

Until we see that wording, nobody can safely say whether you have “primacy of contract” parking rights, whether the managing agent had power to introduce a permit scheme, and whether PPM can lawfully impose new terms on you via signs.

This is what the AST says: 

Definitions – “Property”

“Property means the property identified in the Tenancy Particulars and (unless specifically excluded) includes any loft, cellar or other spaces within the building together with boundaries fences garden parking spaces garages and outbuildings (if any) and any part or parts thereof belonging to the Landlord.”

Definitions – “Common Parts”

“Common Parts means those parts of the Building retained by the Landlord or Superior Landlord (if any) for the provision of services to the Building and/or for use as common access ways and facilities in common with by other residents of the Building and includes any boundaries fences garden parking spaces garages or outbuildings…” 

Landlord’s obligation

“for so long as the Tenant complies with the Tenant’s Obligations to give the Tenant exclusive possession of the Property, the use of the Contents and access to the Common Parts without interruption during the Term”

D. Managing agent has NO power to vary the tenancy

“The Landlord’s Agent shall have no authority to amend or vary this agreement. No amendment or variation of this agreement will be effective unless confirmed in writing by the Landlord or subject to the Landlord’s express prior written authority…” [/quote]

Re-reading this I feel like the scummy lettings agent sort of scammed me an extra £50 per month, for 2 years for parking when, if I am understanding these clauses right, I could park without needing a permit or even anything extra. As I remember I asked about parking and the letting agent said, when viewing the property and later in an email, that parking was £50 extra a month. When I paid the £50 I was allocated a specific bay, I have email evidence of this also.

As already advised, Immediate priority remains the Notices to Hirer (NTH). Each NTH is the notice you can actually appeal. You should appeal each NTH separately, in time, even if you believe appealing is pointless. The point is to create a clean record and to preserve your position. Also, for hire vehicles, PoFA has extra requirements. If the NTH did not include the required hire documents, that is decisive against hirer liability. “Available on request” is not the same as “served with the notice”.

Maybe I was hasty, but I submitted a collective appeal, by email for ll the 8 NTH I have received so far, I sent to them by email because their appeal portal forces users to accept liability and you can’t proceed if you don’t. It literally says “I accept liability as driver/Hirer/Keeper” and another mandatory button which states: “This statement is factual”; it looked to me like a deliberate trap for appellants. 

This is what my appeal email said:

To whom it may concern,

This email constitutes a formal appeal against all listed Parking Charge Notices ref:

AXXXX

AXXXX

AXXXX

AXXXX

AXXXX

AXXXX

AXXXX

AXXXX

I write as the hirer of the vehicle referenced in the above Parking Charge Notices, and I do so to make one point unmistakably clear: your attempt to hold me liable is unsupported by law.

You have chosen to invoke Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 in order to pursue me as hirer. That statute, however, does not operate by assertion, implication, or convenience. It operates only by strict compliance.

You have failed that test.

Schedule 4, paragraphs 13 and 14, impose mandatory conditions before liability may be transferred to a hirer. Chief among these is the requirement that a Notice to Hirer be accompanied by specific documents, including:

a copy of the hire agreement, and

a copy of the statement of liability signed by the hirer.

None of the Notices to Hirer you have issued were accompanied by those documents. This is not a technicality, nor is it curable after the event. It is a complete failure of the statutory mechanism upon which your claim depends.

In the absence of compliance with Schedule 4, you have no lawful basis to pursue me. Your only remaining option would be to pursue the driver, a person you have not identified, and whom I am under no obligation to name.

I also note that your online appeal portal offers no means to challenge a charge without first admitting liability or nominating a third party. Such a mechanism is not an appeal process at all, but an exercise in compelled confession, and I reject it entirely.

The position is therefore straightforward. Either you cancel the above Parking Charge Notices, or you issue a Letter of Claim so that this matter may be addressed in a forum where evidential standards, rather than administrative fiction, prevail.

I await your confirmation.

They sent this email today:

Good morning XXXXX.

Please make an appeal by following the links below:

If your parking charge notice reference number begins with A:

https://parkingandpropertymanagement.zatappeal.com

Or make a postal appeal to the address below.

Please be aware that we are required to act in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations May 2018 and as such we cannot process or divulge any data we might hold on our systems to anyone other than the person or persons the data directly relates to. In this instance it would clearly be either the driver or registered keeper of the vehicle or both. Could you please provide the name and address of the driver at the time the PCN was issued ( 😊 ) or confirm that you are the registered keeper of the vehicle and/or you were driving the vehicle at the time.

Please be advised that again in accordance with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 Schedule 4 we are entitled to ultimately pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle for the parking charge in the absence of a drivers name and address. and /or non payment of the charge.

If you are acting on behalf of the driver or the registered keeper and they wish you to continue doing so, we require written signed and dated authority from the party you are representing confirming that they wish you to represent them in this matter. Please provide such written signed authority by return in order that we can expedite this appeal properly and in accordance with GDPR May 2018 we thank you for your cooperation with regard to this matter "

Your Managing Agent will have no direct day-to-day overview regarding vehicles enforced under this scheme. Consequently, they cannot act as media-tors in any cases concerning the enforcement of any vehicles.

So you must answer this very precisely by checking what you wrote:

1. In any appeal or email to PPM, did you use wording like “I parked”, “I drove”, “I was driving”, “my vehicle was parked by me”, or anything that clearly identifies you personally as the driver?

2. Or did you keep it to “I am the resident/hirer/keeper” and “the driver” did this or that? 

Do not guess. Look at your sent appeal text. If you have identified the driver, your strategy becomes a resident-rights/authority/signage/variation dispute rather than a PoFA Hirer liability dispute. If you have not identified the driver, then PoFA compliance remains critical and the hire-document failures are very strong.

I don’t remember the exact wording of the original appeal and I don’t have a copy but I don’t think I identified anyone as the driver, although I did say “my vehicle is getting tickets” but this was in an email I sent to the property manager, she did CC PPM manager initially, without my permission.

At the same time, you should be making a formal complaint to the building management/landlord/managing agent. They are trying to wash their hands of it by claiming they are no longer an intermediary, but that does not remove their responsibility (vicarious liability) for what their contractor is doing on their land, especially where you are paying for parking and have written permission.

Your complaint should do the following:

1. Put them on notice that you are an authorised resident/occupier and you have written permission to park, and their contractor is issuing charges to an authorised user because they failed to administer the transition properly.

2. Demand they instruct PPM to cancel all PCNs issued to you (and to Hertz) for the period in question, and confirm that your vehicle is correctly registered going forward.

3. Demand disclosure of the basis on which they claim you must personally “register” despite their earlier circular stating they had provided the existing list, and despite their own confirmation that your vehicle was permitted.

4. State plainly that you do not accept their position that they have no power over their agent/contractor. They contracted them and so they can instruct them. If they refuse, they are choosing to allow harassment of authorised residents.

5. Require a formal final response under their complaints procedure and provide a deadline.

Escalation threats should be realistic and aimed at the correct bodies:

1. If you rent via a letting agent: demand the agent’s redress scheme details and state you will escalate to their redress scheme if not resolved after final response.

2. If it is a property managing agent for the block: require their redress scheme details and state you will escalate to that scheme upon deadlock/final response.

3. If there is a freeholder and the managing agent is acting for them: put both on notice that you will escalate to the freeholder and to any relevant regulator/redress scheme for the managing agent.

4. If your data has been mishandled (passing details around, failure to pass them, causing third-party processing and Hertz fees): reserve your position to escalate data protection complaints to the appropriate regulator if necessary, but keep the complaint focused on cancellation and correction first.

I submitted a formal complaint around 8 days ago and I am expecting a response in the next few days, I’ll update when I receive it. Also, I have submitted SAR to PPM a week ago asking for all data they have of me and vehicles related to me and any communication they had/have about me, they and the management agent. I expect a response from them in 25 days or so.

Finally, the Hertz admin fees are a separate issue and should be dealt with after you have stabilised the PCN situation. Whether you can recover them or challenge them depends almost entirely on the wording of your hire agreement.

You need to check and quote the exact clause(s) that deal with:

1. Administrative fees for “fines”, “penalties”, “PCNs”, “charges”, “invoices”, “tolls”, “congestion charges”, “parking charges”, and any wording about “private parking companies” or “parking charge notices”.

2. Whether Hertz can charge an admin fee merely for passing your details, and whether they can do this for private invoices that are not statutory penalties.

3. Any clause allowing them to pay such charges on your behalf (many contracts say they will not pay private PCNs but will charge an admin fee for transfer; some are broader).

4. Any clause allowing immobilisation/remote disabling for non-payment of admin fees, and whether that was contractually permitted.

 If the hire contract language is limited to “fines/penalties/traffic violations issued by authorities” and does not clearly include private parking invoices, you may have grounds to challenge the admin fees and the disabling action. If it expressly includes private parking charges/PCNs/invoices, your position is weaker, but you may still have arguments about fairness and about losses caused by the building management/PPM fiasco.

This is what the Hertz agreement says:

A. Admin fee clause (£20)

Clause 5.2

“If you fail to make payment… we may pay any such penalty charges, other charges, fees… on your behalf and you shall reimburse to us on demand our costs for doing so together with an additional administration fee of £20 per incident…” 

B. Passing details to third parties

“we may pass on your details including your last known address… Where we pass your details to a third party, such as a Charging Authority…”

Important update about Hertz. I sent an email to them when the vehicle was immobilised even after paying them the admin fees (I paid after 6pm and but the vehicle was immobilised until 10am next day, which meant I could not do my nightshift) and initially they offered an apology, I escalated, then they offered £40 “good will”, I then informed them I reject that offer and I would be seeking legal advice from my union (GMB ) along with my estimated loss of earnings, they buckled and offered an apology by phone from a manager and a payment of £100 compensation. I think I could have pushed them further but I decided to accept their offer. They also promised in writing that they would refund all the “admin fees” (total around £200) if I get the PCNs cancelled. 

I intend to make them clarify how they can justify charging me a fee because some company sent them an invoice.

Do you think those clauses in the agreement gives them the right to charge admin fees on these invoices?

Also of note: each email they send when they have notified me of PPM’s invoices, all say these:

We have been notified of a traffic offence committed for the period during which the vehicle with registration xxxxxx was in your possession.

Your details have been passed to the relevant authority and if you have not already done so, you will soon a Penalty Charge Notification directly from the authority addressed to you. At this point you can appeal the ticket directly with the authority if you so wish. 

There are circumstances where the authority rejects our application to transfer liability to you; in which case, we will notify you once we receive the Notice. It is imperative that you deal with the Notice immediately upon receipt.

Please, note that if the fine fee has been increased at the time if this fine notification, don't pay the increased fee as this copy of the ticket is for information purposes only for you.

We transferred the liability of the fine to you within 28 days as per the rules. Hence, you should not pay the increased fee. We will advise you appeal to the local authority to return the fee to its original charge while explaining their rule.

As per the rental agreement, there is an administration fee of 20.00 per fine which is now outstanding on your account. Please find the attached copies of the fine and the invoice can be located on your app.

I don’t see how PPM invoice equates to a traffic fine.

So, what you should post next, in one reply to the thread, is:



Once those four items are available, we can guide you on the strongest resident-rights route against PPM and on a properly sequenced complaints and recovery strategy against management and Hertz.[/quote]

I think I have ticked all those points; please let me know if there’s anything else I should add.

Thank you.




I thought i'd post some images here including redacted emails from the property manager from 2023 and also in October this year accepting money for parking, PPM's appeal portal, the parking sign and one of the NTHs.

Whilst I normally recommend against appealing by post - subject to the above clarifications (and not before), I'd be tempted to make printed appeals for all of the Notices to Hirer, send them together by first class post. For the sake of £1.70 it at least gets actual appeals in play

I can't see anything in those tenancy agreement pages of the specific item that was originally asked for is still not actually evidenced within what you have posted, because nothing you have shown so far contains an operative clause that grants a parking right, allocates a parking space as part of “the Property”, or sets out any express right to use a bay or a permit-controlled area.

The definitions mention “Common Parts” and “Building Regulations”, but the actual Building Regulations themselves (the separate rules document that those words refer to) have not been produced, and any clause that incorporates them by reference and gives the landlord/agent power to introduce or vary them in a way that could lawfully impose a third-party permit scheme is still not shown in the pages provided. If there is a separate addendum, schedule, estate handbook, welcome pack, parking policy, or any “regulations” document supplied to tenants, that is what is still missing, because that is the only place these schemes are usually documented. Until that document (and any variation notice) is produced, nobody can give a safe conclusion about whether the parking regime is contractual, whether it can override tenancy rights, or whether it was validly introduced.

The sentence you quoted (“I am a long term tenant… I have been parking… and paying…”) is not, in itself, a clear admission that you were the driver on any of the specific material dates/times for any of the PCNs. It is generic background about your status and long-running arrangement/entitlement. It does not identify who was driving on any given occasion, and it does not tie you to any particular “event” time that the operator relies on.

Where the caution comes in is not because that sentence suddenly becomes a driver admission, but because an operator (or their solicitor) will try to stitch together wording from different places to argue you have “effectively” admitted driving. That is why the exact wording of the first appeal remains important: if the first appeal contains anything like “I parked on [date]” / “I entered” / “I returned” / “I did not see the signs”, that is the sort of language that can be used to pin driver identity. Your property-manager complaint sentence is not that.

Separately, the other two items that remain outstanding: the exact wording of the very first appeal that went in after Hertz forwarded the correspondence, and confirmation that there was no driver identification anywhere else. Without the verbatim first appeal text, it is impossible to rule out an inadvertent driver admission, and that one issue dictates strategy in an IPC/hirer case. That is why the advice cannot sensibly move on until that wording is provided (or obtained via SAR).

On the portal point, yes: if there are multiple PCNs, each appeal should be submitted individually so each PCN has its own record, date-stamp and unique reference trail. If the portal forces an “admission” tick-box to proceed, the solution is to proceed only if you can add a clear statement in the appeal text itself along these lines: “For the avoidance of doubt, no liability is admitted. Any tick-box wording requiring an ‘admission’ was completed under protest solely to permit submission of this appeal. The operator is put to strict proof of driver identity, any lawful basis to transfer liability to the appellant, and the full contractual basis for the charge.” Make clear that compelled acceptance of liability as a condition of access to an appeal mechanism is improper and will be relied upon as evidence of an unfair process and an attempt to manufacture admissions if the operator later issues proceedings.

Should I send another appeal?

If you have 8 PCNs then I theory you should be submitting 8 appeals.

Quote

Should I send another appeal?

If you have 8 PCNs then I theory you should be submitting 8 appeals.

I'm not sure what to say on the appeals. If I wait for the SAR, then it'll be beyond the 28 days and I submit now, should it be the same POFA 2012 appeal or something different?